I Pledge Allegiance
by Dale Neibaur, 1976
"I pledge allegiance to the flag
Of the United States of ..."
"George Washington had a mistress."
"I pledge allegiance to the flag ..."
"And besides, if a few battles barely won
Instead had been barely lost,
They'd have hung your whole pack of 'Founding Fathers'
As a gang of heinous traitors."
"I pledge allegiance to ..."
"God is dead."
"I pledge ..."
"Look, dummy, why bother? Nobody hears you.
Nobody believes you.
Nobody gives a damn anymore."
"I ... I ..."
I grew up
In America the Ugly --
Restless crowds of nowhere people
Card-destroying draft dodgers
Mind-destroying reality dodgers
And the 4 o'clock news
Always telling you exactly what went wrong
"As it happened."
I grew up
In America the Ugly --
Suckled on the radio revolution
Weaned on the television violence
Fed on the music
The brooding quiets
The explosive riots
Of a generation of world-weary warriors
Too confused to define their cause
Much less their enemy.
I grew up
In America the Ugly.
And from Watergate to West Second South
(Where the whores were selling hell for pennies)
Wasn't a soul could tell me
Whatever happened
To America the Great.
I grew up
To the pounding pace of senseless change,
And at sixteen years and some-odd days
I renounced my pledge to the nation
I could no longer comprehend --
A one-man revolution that turned my simple world inside-out
And sent me off looking for the dream called
America.
Twice a hundred years ago
Our forefathers had the audacity to bring forth
Upon this American Continent
A new dream:
A nation conceived in Liberty
And dedicated to Responsible Freedom.
My brothers, it was not dedicated
To three-day weekends
Nor fast bucks;
Our ancestors did not bleed out young lives
On half a hundred battlefields
Over whether or not John Wayne should star
In "Saturday Night at the Movies."
They were after more -- crazy young rebels
With a crazy young unheard-of cause
That said people were intelligent enough to rule themselves.
They bought the right to try it
At the expense of "Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor,"
Then proved they knew how to use
The 'Freedom' they bought so high.
They gave everything they had for that freedom --
Then they gave it to us
Free of Charge.
"One Nation
Under God
With Liberty
And Justice
For All."
I grew up in America;
And I have found the dream
That makes her beautiful.
As long as the inhabitants thereof remain under God
A righteous people intelligently ruling themselves;
As long as they hold
A glimmer of a glimmer
Of my father's father's dream;
Even so long
I pledge my allegiance
To America.